Get the most from your Realtor – Part 1

The phone rings.

“Can you show me property today?”

I guess most people think it’s a pretty easy job to show a
house.

I mean, how hard is it to unlock a door anyway?

Well
there IS a lot more to it than that.

There’s actually a lot of preparation. It takes time to
get properties ready. Even just one.

I have made the mistake of agreeing to show property at
the last minute or squeezing a client in between clients.

No bueno.

It all ends up bad.

You look like a dumb dumb.

I thought they’d appreciate the fact that I took them in
at the last minute. I thought they would understand what
I had to go through to do this.

Nope.

They don’t.

And they don’t care.

The appreciation you’re looking for morphs into disdain.
You end up looking like a disorganized mess.

“Sure, I’ll meet you in 20 minutes.”

Let’s remember. Nothing good happens when anyone is
rushed.

You don’t have time to print out the listing information,
you race to pick the client up, race to get them there,
call the listing agent on the drive over and don’t tell me
anyone should be driving and talking on a cell phone.

To top it off, when you can’t answer any questions they
have about the property, they look at you like you have an
extra chromosome.

Clients expect you to be Rain Man and have the tax
records, school test results and measurements of every
home in Maricopa County memorized.

Here’s another of my favorites, “Oh I drove past a house
with a sign on it. Can we go look at that?”

No.

We can’t just go look at that.

We don’t even know if anyone is living in “that.”

We Realtors need time to research, time to look up the
property, time to call and see if it’s even still
available. We also need time to look at a map to make sure
it doesn’t neighbor a nuclear plant…ya know. Stuff like
that.

You don’t want to spend time looking at a home, falling in
like with it and then find out someone else likes it too
and there’s an offer on it.

There’s also showing instructions that need to be
followed.

Sometimes it’s occupied, so you need to give a homeowner
proper notice.

If tenant lives there, they have the legal right to make
you wait longer.

Even if you do call ahead and the place is occupied,
sometimes it gets tricky.

There can be miscommunication between a listing agent and
occupant.

I won’t get into details but let’s just say one time it
ended with an indecent exposure charge.

And no, it wasn’t pretty.

So do yourself and your Realtor a favor. Give them time
to properly get properties ready for you to see.

Believe me, you’ll keep respecting them and they’ll
continue to earn it.

Diane Brennan is Your Voice in Real Estate for the
Phoenix, Arizona metro area. She also co-hosts That
Real Estate Show with Linda Williams every Saturday at
3pm on News Talk 92.3 KTAR. She failed miserably at
pursuing a career in Gold Digging and currently helps
people buy and sell property everywhere in the Phoenix
metro area from Scottsdale to Paradise Valley to Goodyear
and Chandler. Rumor is she knows her stuff and can be
quite enjoyable to be around for long periods of time.
Her driving….not so much.

Follow @KTAR923